Apropos of nothing, on the face of it, I wanted to share with you a cautionary tale relative to the importance of accurate (and complete) communications, particularly in those perilous moments when you have a less than satisfied customer. As you might guess, I travel by air a fair amount of the time (and no, this isn’t a beef about delays. I count myself pretty fortunate in that regard. Delays are an inevitable function of any commute, doesn’t matter what mode, but I digress) and, without getting into too much detail, a process that had always worked in the past suddenly did not “go” the way I expected/had experienced literally tens, if not hundreds, of times in the past.

The initial encounter with the airline folks did not yield much in the way of satisfaction; in fact, I don’t think I would be hyperbolic in describing the handling of that interaction as bordering on indifferent. I try to keep an even keel in such matters, but I will tell you that I was a wee bit frustrated. I also knew that there was a process for airing my concerns, so I elected to save it for another day.

At this point (and yes there is a point to all this and I’m almost there), I had a pretty good idea of what was going on (clearly, at least in my mind, it was a systems issue and one part of the system wasn’t communicating very effectively with another part of the system), so I contacted customer service and explained my plight. The person I spoke with was very empathetic and offered a solution that she guaranteed would resolve the issue; I came away with a very positive feeling, but guess what? The solution didn’t work. There were a few more back and forths with a few more ideas/solutions, but nothing that really addressed what I was convinced was the issue. The customer service folks promised to investigate and let me know.

Well, it turns out that it was a systems issue and at least some folks at the airline knew of its existence and had been working on it for a couple of weeks. They weren’t sure when the issue would be resolved, but I was okay with that—because I now knew what was going on. The “problem,” as I now see it, is that the folks who knew there was a problem and what the “symptoms” of the problem were, didn’t let everyone in the customer service process know what was going on. There is nothing more effective in answering someone’s questions than being able to speak directly to the issue—even if the resolution is not immediate.

How many times in our work lives have we been less than proactive in providing everyone in the process a complete picture of what’s going on? Inevitably, one can look back and figure out exactly when full disclosure fell by the wayside and frequently results in hard feelings, etc. It all kind of dovetails back to the mantra of “if you see something, say something,” though in this case, it’s more along the lines of “if you know something, say something.” While one may not intend to be secretive, sometimes it’s tough to defend “compartmentalization” or whatever euphemism you might adopt. When it comes to safety, the more everyone knows, the more effectively risk can be managed.

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About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Briefings on Hospital Safety. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.